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ONE HIINDEEDTH ANNIVERSAEY 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 



JULY 4, 1876; 



nS CELEBRATION BY THE CITY OF DOYER, N. H., 



THE PUBLIC PROCEEDINGS, 



ORATION 



By Rev. ALONZO H. QJJINT, d. d. 






■1 



•I 





DOVER,- N. H.: 

MORNING STAR STEAM JOB PRINTING HOUSE. 
1876. 



^ 



PROCEEDINGS. 



At a meeting of the Board of Aldermen of the city ' of 
Dover, N. H., held June 2, 1876, the proper votes were 
adopted " for the purpose of celebrating the Centennial An- 
niversary of our nation's independence," and Aldermen 
Murphy and Wiggin were appointed, on behalf of that 
board, as committee in charge. The Common Council, on 
the same day, concurred, and appointed Councilmen Sea- 
vey, Abbott, Hanson, and O'Neil, upon the committee. 



Under the direction of the above mentioned committee, 
on the 4th of July, a procession was formed at ten o'clock, 
A. M., upon Franklin Square, as follows : 

City Marshal. 

Platoon of Police. 

Chief Marshal^ Col. Andrew H. Young. 

Aids: Capt. G. W. Colbath, Chief of Staff, 

John Kivil, Eobert Rollins. 

FIRST DIVISION. 

Marshal, Charles E. Smith. 

Aids: A. T. Pierce, M. Henry Lothrop, Dennis Cash 

Dover Cornet Band, W. D. Taylor, Leader. 



Strafford Guards, Lieut. Geo. H. Demeritt commanding. 

Hibernian United Benevolent Society, M. Flaherty, Pres. 

Sabbath Schools. 

Orator, 

Invited Guests, and 

City Government, in Carriages. 

SECOND DIVISION. 

Marshal^ Albert F. Seavey. 
Aids: L. Chamberlain, E, Ryan. 
National Cornet Band. 
Olive Branch Lodge Knights of Pythias, Capt. J. S.Ab- 
bott, commanding. 
St. Mary's Total Abstinence Society, Bernard Hoye, Presi- 
dent, commanding. 
First Light Battery, Section A, Capt. Frank F. Davis. 
Representation of Trades. 
Citizens in Carriages. 

The line of march was from Franklin Square down Cen- 
tral, up Washington, Gushing, and Silver Streets, to Co- 
checho Riding Park. 

Upon arriving at the Park, the Chief Marshal, Col. A. 
H. Young, announced the following officers : 

President — Col. Charles M. Murphy. 
Vice-P7'eside7its — Hon. Samuel M. Wheeler, Dr. Levi 
G. Hill, Col. Daniel Hall, Hon. James Bennett, Chas. H, 
Sawyer, John Bracewell, William Sterns, Harrison Haley, 
Hiiam F. Snow, John C. Plumer, John H. Hurd, John R. 
Varney. 

Col. C. M. Murphy, on taking the chair, said : 

Felloio Citizens: — We have seldom, if ever, suffered 
the birthday of our nation to pass without some observance ; 



and we should certainly be wanting in patriotism, if not re- 
miss in our duty as loyal citizens, should we fail to show a 
due appreciation of the importance of the epoch which this 
day marks in our country's history. 

One hundred years ago to-day, our forefatliers dared to 
declare to the world, that they no longer contended merely 
for their rights as British subjects, but for freedom and in- 
dependence. 

In that contest were involved the dearest of human riohts 
and human destinies ; and on its issue depended the hopes, 
not only of America, but of the human race. 

We hold in grateful remembrance the men who guided 
our councils, and our armies, through the trying period in 
which they established our independence, and reared the 
fabric of government which has made us a free, happy, and 
prosperous nation. 

We rejoice that we to-day, after the lapse of a century, still 
hold the priceless heritageof civil and religious liberty which 
they have transmitted to us, consecrated with their blood. 

When we review the past century, and note our rapid and 
steady progress as a nation, and the uniform success which 
has attended our struggles for independence, nationality, 
universal freedom, and unbroken union, we can but feel that 
our destiny has been in the hands of the Divine Providence 
to whom our fathers appealed for the rectitude of their in- 
tentions. 

As we have received these blessings from our ancestors 
unimpaired, it behooves us to transmit them to our posterity. 

Let us see to it, then, that the men to whom we trust the 
public weal at the beginning of the second century of our 
national existence, are animated with something of the wor- 
thy purposes, pure motives, and high resolves that inspired 
the fathers of the Revolution. 

The President then introduced D. G. Thompson, a.m., 



Principal of the Sawyer Grammar School, who read the 
Declaration of Independence. 

The Rev, George B. Spaulding, pastor of the First 
Church in Dover, led in prayer. 

An Oration was then delivered by Rev. Alonzo H. 
Quint, D. D. 

After the Oration, the procession was again formed and 
marched through Silver and Central streets to the City 
Hall, where the Chief Marshal, after complimenting it upon 
the fine display, dismissed the various organizations to their 
respective head-quarters. 



Resolved hy the City Gouncils of the City of Dover : 

That the thanks of these Councils be tendered to Rev. 
A. H. Quint, for his able and eloquent oration on the 4th 
inst. ; that his honor the Mayor be requested to solicit a 
copy for publication ; and that the city printer be authorized 
to print one thousand copies in pamphlet form. 

Common Council, July 6, 1876. 
Passed. 
H. A. Redfield, Clerk. 

In Board of Aldermen, July 6, 1876. 

Concurred. 
J. B. Stevens, Jr., City Cleric. 



ORATION.* 

Citizens of Dover : 

Nothing would have induced me to 
speak anywhere on this anniversary, but that I felt it to Ke 
a special honor that I was selected for this centennial occa- 
sion by tlfe authorities of this ancient town. Although now 
twenty years a citizen of another state, yet here was my 
childhood. In your public schools and Academy was my 
early education. My father's home was and is on the old 
Waldron lands, and scarce a pistol shot from the site of the 
massacre of 1689, whose legends led me into Dover histo- 
ry. I used to search for the graves of my emigrant ances- 
tors who lie buried in Dover soil, but their sepulchres, like 
those of the other emigrants, no man knoweth. I used to 
go and drink of the waters of that spring on Dover Neck 
which was the household spring of one of my ancestors at 
least two centuries and a quarter ago, and which still bears 
his name. In your cemetery lies buried my own offspring, 
and there is the spot reserved where I shall have my own 
last resting place. 

If I went to another State, it is but as one of the great 
number whom Dover has given to other States. If history 
means men, then New Hampshire history is in the ocean 
commerce, the land traffic, the education, and the public in- 
terests of the whole country. Especially is Massachusetts 

* A large portion of this address was omitted in delivery, but the 
whole is printed by request of the City Government. 



indebted to New Hampshire ; as it is to our hills which con- 
dense tlie clouds into streams to make the great rivers whose 
waters are the wealth of her Lowells, and Lawrences, and 
Holyokes. Many of us always look to Dover, in the dream 
of early home, and it added to my own interest on this cen- 
tennial occasion, that my father's father and grandfather, 
both born in the town for which Dover and Portsmouth 
gave the territory, were soldiers in the army which main- 
tained the Declaration made a hundred years ago to-day. 

I know you will pardon these allusions personal to myself. 

Nor was it an unwelcome suggestion, that the occasion 
needed a historical treatment. Indeed, national authority 
has itself suggested that this day be made everywhere the 
occasion of recalling local histoiy ; and ours is rich in its 
abundance. But, in fjxct, the former laudation of American 
glory, which made the staple of much of the Fourth-of-July 
oratory, has become obsolete. Our boasting has been sub- 
dued. The recent years of waste and blood ; the years in 
which men lived ten years in every one, and when women's 
tears fell fast ; the years when great principles marshalled 
mighty armies against each other, and arrayed gigantic ar- 
maments, — have sobered us. The grass grows green again 
over the graves of the dead, and the rains have well-nigh 
washed away every earth-work, but we have hardly rested 
since every morning the bugle sounded the reveille on a line 
of a thousand miles. If I were tempted to boast, I should 
at once remember that, before our first hundred years had 
passed, brethren were in arms against brethren ; the de- 
scendants of revolutionary fathers were separated under hostile 
leaders ; and I would in thought stand again beside my own 
fallen comrades. Our boasting is ended. Our whole coun- 
try has been chastened. Our devotion to the principles 
symbolized in the folds of our floating banner is deepened, 
but our glorying in our self-confidence gives way to deeper, 
soberer, intenser feelinij. 



So I turn to our own local history. Of course, naturally 
in the tli-ift of thought which conforms to the purpose of the 
day. In the great centres, they will rightly discuss the 
great principles of statesmanship, and see the footsteps of 
God in our national history. Ours is the more humble work 
of local recollection. 

I can scarcely touch the outlines of our own history. 
Still less can I give the details which belong to the work 
you have elsewhere asked me to prepare. But to-day I 
will remind you of the original character of our emigrant an- 
cestry ; their political training ; and their discipline of hard- . 
ships in the wars of the century preceding the Revolution ; 
all as suggesting the preparation of an old New England 
town for the struirale of 1776. 



•oo 



I. Some towns have no remote history. The remote 
history of ancient Dover would fill a volume. I mean Do- 
ver as it once was, which I will remember to-day. The 
Dover whose southern boundary was far below the bend of 
the lordly Piscataqua, and included the green farms on the 
lower shore of the beautiful Great Bay ; whose sunset line 
neared the Exeter meadows ; whose eastern edge was the 
centre of the Newichawannock, and up through the rocky 
falls ; which had no head line till one was drawn across 
the Rochester woods, and which was long only the immense 
forests in which there was nothing to break the Indian trail 
from Montreal. Six towns, and parts of two others, are the 
modern inheritors of this old domain, taken off piece by 
piece, but all parts of the homestead. 

When the Declaration of 1776 was making, Dover al- 
ready had a history of more than a century and a half. Ed- 
ward Hilton, its first settler, had lived nearly fifty years aft- 
er his landing, and yet had been in his grave more than a 
hundred years. Only Portsmouth can claim the same age in 
New Hampshire ; the two are coeval, and neither can take 



10 

precedence. On the New England coast, only Plymouth 
had an earlier origin. 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on a spring day, our 
fathers came sailing into the Piscataqua. The name of the 
vessel, the name of its master, the date of its departure from 
England, and of its arrival in the river, are alike unknown. 
Perhaps it was the Plantation, a vessel of the " Council 
for New England," which was on our shores in May of that 
year, and in which was Admiral Francis West, with com- 
mission to " restrain such ships as came to port and trade 
without license," from that Council. Perhaps it was a ves- 
sel specially chartered by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Cap- 
tain John Mason, who held from the Council a grant of 
lands which included the Piscataqua, and who now under- 
took their colonization. Perhaps it was one among the 
scores of fishing vessels which were then annually crossing 
the Atlantic, availed of to transport the few men who were 
destined to begin the settlement of New Hampshire. 

All that is known is this : that the vessel brought hither 
David Thompson, a Scotchman, and Edward Hilton, of the 
Fishmonger's Guild of London, with a few men and nec- 
essaries to begin permanent settlements on the land, and to 
carry on the fisheries in the waters of the river and the 
ocean. Thompson* settled at Pannaway, the now Little 
Harbor ; Hilton sailed up the river and occupied Wecanaco- 
hunt, the now Dover Point. It has always been recorded 
that these emigrants were, although in the same vessel, " in 
two divisions." Recent investigations make it clear that the 
two were independent of each other. I Tlie subsequent pa- 

* An original agreement of Thompson, dated in 1622, referring to 
Thompson's patent, is in possession of tlie eminent historical scliol- 
ar, Charles Deane, Esq., of Cambridge, Mass., who will soon give 
it to the press with appropriate annotations. 

f I am happy to say that my friend, Charles W. Tuttle, Esq., of 
Boston, of the old Dover stock, than whom no man is better in- 
formed as to the patents, and who is writing an exhaustive life of 
Capt. John Mason, fully coincides in this conviction. 



11 

tent to Hilton says that this Dover settlement was made by 
Hilton ' ' and his associates" at ' ' their own proper cost 
and charges." The associates, not the emigrants but the 
projectors, were merchants of Plymouth, and other towns of 
the west of England. Probably his few men, and certainly 
the emigrants who followed a few years later, were of that 
hardy stock, particularly of Devonshire, which gave to the 
ocean such men as Gilbert, Drake, Hawkins, and Ralegh, 
and contributed so essentially to the glory of the reign of 
Elizabeth. 

So vague is the knowledge of the men, the vessel, the 
date of departure from England, and the anchorage in the 
river. The emigrants have left us no records of these 
things. Plymouth had its Bradford and its Winslow. 
Massachusetts Bay had its Winthrop. The records of their 
beginnings are minute. But Plymouth was the refuge 
of Pilgrims, whose consciences enforced their separation 
from the Church of England. Massachusetts Bay was the 
refuge of Puritans, whose consciences scrupled at some of 
the ceremonies, but not at the existence, of the national 
church. Each of these had the histories of peculiar ideas to 
write. The New Hampshire colonists, neither Pilgrims nor 
Puritans, satisfied with both the existence and the ceremo- 
nies of the established church, came here as bold and hardy 
pioneers in commercial enterprise ; whose number of beaver 
skins bought of the Indians, or of fish cured for the Eng- 
lish market, had none of the romance to attract a historian, 
but whose vigorous West-of-England blood made a race 
fearless alike of the storms of every sea, and of the savages 
of every forest. 

This attempt at colonization required courage, energy, 
and self-denial. It is true, it was not an unknown coast. 
On the tenth of April, 1603, under the patronage of mer- 
chants of Bristol, Martin Pring left that port, with two ves- 
sels, one of fifty tons, the other of twenty-six. In his ex- 



12 

plorations of our coast, lie entered the Piscataqua. He 
rowed up ten or twelve miles, the first European who ever 
saw the woods of Dover. " Very goodly groves and 
woods," his narrative says he found on the shores of our 
rivers, " and sundry sorts of beasts;" but he left it to its 
silence. On the third of March, 1614, Captain John Smith 
sailed from London. On the thirtieth of April he reached 
Monhegan. Tiiere he built seven boats. In one of these 
boats, with eight men, lie explored the coast, and entered 
the Piscataqua. Probable it also seems, that John Mason, 
while plantation governor in Newfoundland, also explored 
our shores, and thus personally learned of the advantages of 
the place which he chose for colonization.* 

Nor is it unlikely that fishermen, who touched at the Isles 
of Shoals, had sometimes found a harbor in the safe inlet of 
the main land. 

But, in that spring of 1623, from Plymouth harbor to the 
Piscataqua, there is no substantial evidence of the residence 
of a single European ; and from Piscatacjua eastward, there 
was nothing save temporary visiting places of fishermen, till 
one reached the French settlement at Mt. Desert. Inland 
were the savage tribes, beginning at the very harbor, and 
peopling the unknown forests. Along the coasts were often 
ships of other nations, or vessels whose easy allegiance 
made them no desirable visitors. Their only neighbors, for 
some years to come, were to be the fishermen who might 
land upon the Isles of Shoals. 

Other and stronger attempts at colonization had failed. 
Bartholomew Gosnold,in 1602, had built a fortified house on 
an islet within an inland pond on the island of Cuttyhunk, in 
Buzzard's Bay. It was a place of beauty and safety. But 



* I have this from the researches of Charles W. Tattle, Esq., al 
ready mentioned. 



13 

dissensions arose, and ended the settlement within a month.* 
George Popham had, in 1607, settled a colony at the mouth 
of the Kennebec, with glowing titles of officials. "They 
came hither," says Alexander, " being pressed to the en- 
terprise as endangered by the law or by their own necessi- 
ties." Tiiey abandoned it in the following spring, *' and 
this," says the cotemporary Strachey, "was the end of the 
northern colony upon the river Sachadehoc." Richard 
Vines, sent out by Gorges to explore, had spent one desolate 
winter, that of 1616-17, near Saco ; but this visit was not 
called a settlement. Thomas Weston had sent more than 
fifty men, in 1622, who occupied the now Weymouth, but 
in the following March they abandoned it, and when Weston 
came over the ocean in 1623, the adventurer, pillaged by 
the Indians to his very clothing, found hospitality in the 
colony just beginning at Piscataqua. When Thompson and 
Hilton, with their few hardy men, approached our rivers, 
from Plymouth to Mt. Desert was a wilderness. 

These two little groups, not the hundred of Plymouth, 
not the fifty of Weston, not the large companies of Gosnold, 
or Popham, not the strong emigration of Winthrop, planted 
themselves on the Piscataqua, and there they remained. 

The dwellers on the beautiful plateau at the Point, where 
you go for the breezes of summer, still look southward 
across the rapid Piscataqua, and westward across the green 
islands, and eastward across the Newichawannock, where the 
Eliot fields are backed by Agamenticus. Successive emi- 



* Belknap visited this spot June 20, 1797, and says : "We had the 
supreme satisfaction to find the cellar of Gosnold's store-house ; the 
stones of which were evidently taken from the neighboring beach ; 
the rock of the islet being less movable and lying in ledges." Sev- 
enty years later, I visited the same spot, with Charles Deane, Esq., 
and a few others. Stones were lying scattered, but no imagina- 
tion could then outline an angle made by men. The storms had 
obliterated every trace which Belknap had found. 



14 

grants built their houses upwards on the slopes washed by 
the tides of the two rivers. In 1G28, this settlement paid 
half as much as Plymouth, in the cost of removing Morton 
from jNIerry Mount. In 1633, Thomas Wiggin, a descend- 
ant of whom is one of your aldermen to-day, brought an 
accession of more West-of-England people. In 1634, they 
built the first meeting house in New Hampshire on tiiat ele- 
vated spot, "beautiful fn* situation," whose fortifications 
are not yet obliterated. The additions were moderately 
Puritan, probably, but not severely, and by no means strong 
enouo'h to chanoje the ori<2:inal character of the colony, and 
from the spring day of 1623, Dover had had its continuous 
history of one hundred and fifty-three years, at the date of 
the great Declaration. 

New Hampshire was not a Puritan colony. Its original 
settlement was under the auspices of men of the church of 
England. Although in 1633, a Puritan minister, William 
Leverich, came to Dover, he soon departed on account of 
want of support. I deem it fortunate that New Hampshire 
was not Puritan. There was needed a place in New Eng- 
land where liberty should be real. Puritanism has done a 
magnificent work in the world, but it is an exceptional 
power. We respect its energy, its faithfulness, its hardi- 
hood. But the Puritanism which prescribed the cut of 
men's hair and the dress of women, and conformity in teach, 
ing subtle distinctions in the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, 
was not liberty. The liberty of American Puritanism in its 
early days, was liberty for itself to do what it determined, 
but liberty for nobody else. Its purpose was proper ; nec- 
essary for its own safety ; based on the principle of exclud- 
ing from its own borders all who differed from it. But it 
was well for New Hampshire, and for the towns on both 
sides of the Piscataqua, that they were settled under other 
auspices, by a different kind of men, and were governed by 
other rulers. Puritanism is good for Puritans, but other 



15 

men's consciences are just as good for other men. Over its 
northern line was a free colony on which Massachusetts 
looked with jealousy. Men who could not endure the rigid- 
ity of Massachusetts found here a refuge, and this commin- 
gling caused discords. Here came George Burdett, who 
came voluntarily ; Hanserd KnoUys, banished from Mas- 
sachusetts because his sentiments on the doctrine of the Holy 
Ghost were deemed dangerous to the Bay government ; 
Thomas Larkham, churchman in spirit ; and here came that 
famous Captain John Underbill, an old soldier of Prince 
Eugene in the wars of Europe, whose coming in 1639, 
Whittier, the poet who loves the legends of the Piscataqua, 
has put into his musical verse : 

A score of years had come and gone, 
Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Stone, 
When Captain Underhill, bearing scai's, 
From Indian ambush and Flemish wars, 
Left three-hilled Boston, and wandered down, 
East by north to Cochecho town. 

He cheered his heart, as he rode along, 
With screed of scripture, and holy song ; 
Or thought how he rode with his lances free. 
By the lower Rhine and the Zuyder Zee, 
Till his wood-path grew to a trodden road. 
And Hilton Point in the distance showed. 

Goodly and stately and grave to see, 

Into the clearing's space rode he ; 

With the sun on the hilt of his sword in sheath, 

And his silver buckles and spurs beneath ; 

And the settlers welcomed him, one and all, 

From swift Quamphegan to Gonic fall. 

Much as the world should admire the Puritan stock and 
Puritan achievements, we say that the more free West-of- 
England stock was its peer. In adventurous enterprise, in 
bravery, in hardihood, and in the love of liberty not only 



16 

for themselves but for otlicrs, the Piscataqua stock can meet 
the Puritan. It left a race which gave a commander to the 
siege of Louisburg, vv^here New Hampshire men pulled on 
sledges through the swamp, the guns which ensured the 
capture of the strongest fortress in America. A race which 
manned the vessels of John Paul Jones, and fought the des- 
perate conflict on the slippery decks of the Ranger. A race 
which furnished the men who lined the rail-fence at Bunker 
Hill under Stark and Reid, and mowed down the splendid 
Welsh Fusileers. A race such that when Washington ask- 
ed, as to troops who were behaving magnificently, " What 
troops are these? " the answer was, " Full blooded Yankees 
from New Hampshire, sir ! " A race which furnished the 
men, raised by New Hampshire solely, and independent of 
the Continental Congress, whom John Stark led to victory 
at Bennington ; who, on that glorious day turned the tide of 
British success, ensured the surrender of Burgoyne, and 
thus gained that French alliance which secured the Independ- 
ence of the United States. Bennington, with all its results, 
originated on the branches of the Piscataqua. If achieve- 
ments tell character, then the free New Hampshire race was 
at least the peer of the Pui-itan in every trait of manhood, 
and far higher on the platform of individual liberty and 
democratic principle, than if it had clung to the system 
which told alike how a man's dress should be worn and how 
he should worship God. 

II. Nothing appears which can show the political senti- 
ments of the Dover colonists in the earliest years, inasmuch 
as no government existed here. Captain Thomas Wiggin, 
agent for the patentees of some portion of our territory, had 
an oversight partially authoritative, from 1633. Of those 
patentees were the Lords Say and Brook, and other Puri- 
tans. Captain Wiggin was in sympathy with Massachu- 
setts. But when George Burdett came, in 1637, the peo- 



17 

pie made him Governor, and thus set aside Capt. Wiggin. 
Burdett was in correspondence with Archbishop Laud- 
Although tliis fact was probably not known, doubtless his 
sympathies were apparent. Two original letters from him to 
Laud are still in existence.* In the last, dated Novembei 
9, 1638, he says, " there yet being none but Combinations" 
for government, and that he had been at the head of affairs 
for the year past. It thus appears that a Combination for 
government was established here as early as 1(337, and that 
the tone of public sentiment was liberal and not Puritan. 
Burdett's strictures on the Massachusetts government,- 
deeply offensive to that power at the time, do not seem at 
all contrary to fact. Burdett simply mentioned the spirit of 
independence of the mother country which existed in Mas- 
sachusetts. It was not any falsification that offended ; it 
was the utterance of the trutli at a critical time, and the 
ti-eachery of the writer, wlio was then a member of the Sa- 
lem church. 

But on the 22d day of October, 1640, the people of Do- 
ver established or renewed a formal government. The doc- 
ument, the earliest one of Dover history, should here be re- 
produced :f 



* In the Public Eecord Office, London, England. I have two 
copies from the original ; one made for John S. Jenness, Esq., and 
the other for me by W. Noel Sainsbury, Esq., of London. A letter 
intervening between the two, can not be fovmd. 



f The body of this paper was preserved by Hubbard, but the 
names, except three, could not be found by Belknap. John S. 
Jenness, Esq., found a copy in the Public Record Office, London, 
and kindly gave me its use. The one herewith pi'inted was made 
for me by Mr. Sainsbury. The names are given in three columns, 
as in the copy ; as only a copy exists, and not the original, doubt- 
less some names are erroneously spelled. 



18 



Whereas, sundry inischeifes and inconveniences have bcfaln us, 
r\nd more and greater may in regard of want of civill Government, 
liis Gratious Ma^^" haveing hitherto setled no order for us to our 
Knowledge : 

Wee whose names are underwritten being Inhabitants upon the 
River Pascataquack have voluntarily agreed to combine ourselves 
into a body polititjue that wee may the more comfortably enjoy the 
beneiit of his Ma*'*^^ Lawes together with all such Orders as shalbee 
concluded by a major part of the Freemen of our Society in case 
the)" bee not repugnant to the Lawes of England and administered 
in the behalfe of his INIajesty. 

And this wee have mutually ^jromised and concluded to do and 
so to continue till his Excellent Ma"*^ shall give other Order con- 
cerning us. In Witness whereof wee have hereto set our hands the 
two and twentieth day of October in the sixteenth yeare of the 
reign of our Sovereign Lord Charles by the grace of God King of 
Great Britain France and Ireland Defender of the Faith &c. An- 
noq Dom. 1040. 



John Follet, 
Robert Nanney, 
William Jones, 
Phillip Sw addon, 
Richard Pinckhame, 
Bartholomew Hunt, 
William Bowden, 
John Waslill, 
John Heard, 
John Hall, 
Abel Camond, 
Henry Beck, 
Robert Iluggins, 



Thom. Larkham, 
Richard Waldern, 
William Waldern, 
William Storer, 
William Furbur, 
Tho. Layton, 
Tho. Roberts, 
Bartholomew Smith, 
Samuel Haines, 
John Underbill, 
Peter Garland, 
John Dam, 
Steven Teddar, 
John Ugroufe, 
Thomas Canning, 
John Phillips, 
Tho : Dunstar, 



Fran : Champernoon, 
Hansed Knowles, 
Edward Colcord, 
Henry Lahorn, 
Edward Starr, 
James Xute, 
Anthony Emery, 
Richard Laham, 
AVilliam Pomfret, ' 
John Cross, 
George Webb, 
James Rawlins. 



This is a true copy compared with y*^ Originall by mee 

Edw. Cranfield. 

[ixdoksed.] 

The Combination for Government by yc people at Pascataq IC^O 
Rec'd abt. 13th Febr. 82-3. 



19 

Upon this earliest extant paper of our local history, are 
tlie names of our forefathers. Some soon disappeared. 
Cliampernoon, of an ancient and eminent Devon house, 
left our borders. The two ministers, Larkham andKnollys, 
returned to England. John Underhill was afterwards the 
scourge of the Indians beyond the Connecticut. But the 
names of FoUett, Jones, Pinkham, Heard, Hall, Huggins, 
Waldron, Furbur, Lay ton, Roberts, Haines, Canney, Col- 
cord, Nute, Emery and Rollins, are names familiar to this 
pi'esent generation. 

It is more to my present purpose, however, that you see 
the character of this Combination. In the absence of gov- 
ernment, these settlers on a branch of the Piscataqua, fell 
back on the necessary human origin of government, the 
compact of the people. It antedated in practice by a hun- 
dred and thirty. six years, the principle announced in the 
Declaration of 17T6. It was the proof that no act by any 
"gracious Majesty" was necessary to the existence of gov- 
ernment, and that the " body politique" could originate in a 
combination of individuals. Forty men on the shores of a 
river scarcely known by the royal power three thousand 
miles across the ocean, were capable of establishing, by their 
own act, a Government. You will notice, also, its evident 
doctrine of perfect equality. There were no special privi- 
leges accorded to the learned clergymen, on whose heads the 
hands of a Bishop had been laid ; nor to the scion of the 
knightly house whose pedigree was then five hundred years 
old, and in whose veins ran the blood of the Plantagenets. 
Their names were written in the same columns with those of 
obscure laborers, and with no marks of distinction. It was 
a pure democracy. " Such orders as shall be concluded by 
a major part of the freemen of our Society." It was a per- 
fect model of the simplest form of a democratic government, 
and of equal suffrage. Exeter had made a combina- 
tion the year previous. The two papers are essentially 



20 

alike, but you -will see, if you compare tliem, that that of 
Dover omits all reference to the church, which that of Exe- 
ter makes foremost ; and that ours is the simplest, most terse, 
a model of clearness and precision. 

The political history of Dover, and in fact of New Hamp- 
shire, did not begin with a general government, and then a 
subdivision into townships. The townships were first. 
They were independent of each other. A democracy on the 
falls of the Swamscot ; a democracy at Strawberry Bank ; 
a democracy on the upper Piscataqua. Experience showed 
the necessity of union, but when tiiey united, and when they 
all came under the government whose seat was at Boston, 
they retained almost all their independence. Dover ti'ans- 
acted its own local affairs in its own town meetings. I^ 
granted the lands within its borders, and its citizens held 
tiiese lands in fee simple. It levied and collected its own 
taxes. It made its own municipal regulations. Our town 
records are full of legislation ; legislation pf a simple and 
homely kind ; just such as we should expect of plain, saga- 
cious, honest neijihbors meeting together. 

And when in 1641, Dover, after much hesitation, con- 
sented, with the other settlements, to come under the Massa- 
chusetts jurisdiction, the terms of union are remarkable, as 
guai'anteeing local liberty. Massachusetts was glad to se- 
cure any authority over this northern colony. Burdett had 
wisely written to Laud in 1638, " Because ye River of Pas- 
cataquay is very beneficiell for plantation ; having also an 
excellent harbour w^li may much pft or annoy them in case 
of warre ; therefore they indeavoure wtli all their skill and 
might to obtaine y^ Comand thereof." In the treaty of 
union, Massachusetts agreed that Dover and Portsmouth 
should have their own Court and their own magistrates. 
No man could be taken out of his neighborhood for trial as 
to persxjn or property. These towns were exempted from 



21 

all taxes except for their own expenditures, and contributed 
nothing to the provincial Government. No person, as a 
soldier, could be drawn out of these towns without the consent 
of the towns themselves. Still n\ore re'markable was anoth- 
er concession. Massachusetts had a law that only church 
members could be voters ; fundamental in its character. 
But it conceded that these towns sliould be exempted from 
this provision. All admitted inhabitants could vote, "though 
they be not at present church-members." In fact, the free 
spirit of Dover and Portsmouth would never have consented 
to the tyrannical statute, which, however necessary or justi- 
fiable in the origin of Massachusetts, would have been ab- 
surd upon the Piscataqua. Few would have been the vot- 
ers, otherwise. With the original Episcopal element here, 
and with the population which gravitated hither because of 
its freedom, the churchly rule could not be endured. It 
was well. New Han^.pshire people never were tempted to 
" Resolve, first, that the earth belongs to the saints ; sec- 
ondly, that we are the saints." It never had to guard against 
the personal hypocrisy which such a rule tended to produce. 
In subsequent years, it never sympatliized Avith the persecu- 
■ tion against the Quakers ; the few stripes inflicted being by 
force of Massachusetts laws, and Dover at one time being 
one third made up of the Quakers. It had no tendencies 
toward the witchcraft persecutions, and although it saw the 
phenomena, it left them to die of themselves. 

Although, therefore, our ancestors were for nearly forty 
years under the authority of Massachusetts, that authority 
sat lightly. Dover was essentially locally governed, by it- 
self. It sent its deputies to the General Court. jNIajor 
Richard Walderne, its deputy, was seven years Speaker of 
the Massachusetts House, and yet Dover repeatedly passed 
such votes of instruction as this : " You shall stand to 
maintain our privileges, by virtue of our articles of agree- 
ment, and bring the proceedings of the Court, that concern 



22 

us, in writing-." And again : "Orders for the deputy for 
the General Court : he shall not with his consent pass any 
act impugning our privileges, but shall enter his dissent 
agt all such acts." And again : " You shall stand to main- 
tain our privileges concerning military affairs, that we may 
not be drawn out of our County of Dover and Portsmouth, 
acc'g to our first agreement." The little Connnon wealth 
here believed that " Eternal vigilance is tiie price of liber- 
ty," and it steadily and effectually maintained its power of 
local self-government, against authority even so little dis- 
tant, and so lightly felt, as that of Massachusetts Bay. 

Thus we see, citizens, that our local government Avas 
founded by a race hardy in character and tenacious of liber- 
ty ; that it was a voluntarj^ democracy ; and that, in its 
union with INIassachusetts, which was a voluntary act, and 
utterly ignoring royal authority, it reserved local self-gov- 
ernment and local liberties. It is not necessary to trace the 
same spirit through the period of New Hampshire's sepai'ate 
history as a royal province ; it continued ; and when the 
Revolution commenced, there was not a principle beneath it, 
which had not been the intelligent and practised belief of 
our fathers from the beginning. Their original character 
and their political habits alike made to them the great Dec- 
laration a natural and familiar expression of political truths. 

III. The discipline which our fathers here experienced 
in the hardships of the Indian and French wars, had two re- 
sults : the latter wars furnished to the llevolution men al- 
ready soldiers when hostilities with England commenced ; 
and the fearful cost with which successive generations had 
defended their homes, had made them feel their value. 

The first half-century of our history were years of peace. 
The only hint of suspected trouble was in the year 1667, 
when the fortification was built around the meeting-house 
on Dover Neck. 



23 

The remnants of the earth-work, at the base, you know 
are still visible. Some years ago, some vandal holding a 
town office, ordered the cutting off of some of the south- 
eastern projection, for the sake of the gravel ! Execration^ 
be upon his unknown memory ! Glad am I that I do not 
know his name. If I knew it, I should be obliged to hand 
it down to the scorn of posterity. The picture of that spot, 
taken under the care of the present owner,* is before you. 
That owner generously proposes to give the site, if a suita- 
ble monument be assured. Let it be done ! Let a monu- 
ment rise to commemorate Edward Hilton, the first perma- 
nent settler of New Hampshire. Let it rise to commemorate' 
the spot where, without denial, stood the first church erect- 
ed in New Hampshire ; on the spot where the earth -work 
and timbers of 1667 f protected it, whose remnants yet exist 
as clear in outline as in that year more than two centuries 
ago ; where armed men walked their posts while their wives 
and children sang praises to God, or bent in prayer in times 
of suffering. Let there be a shaft whose top shall be greet- 
ed by the eastern sun while all is shade below ; which shall' 
glow with the lingering rays of sunset while the river woods 
are darkened. More than a hundred years before Bunker 
Hill, did the ancestors of men of Bunker Hill stand sentinels 
in that work on Dover Neck ! Descendants of the men of 
Bunker Hill, reverence the work which, defying the storms 



* Mr. Amos D. Purinton, of this city. 

t 4, 5 mo. 1667. It is Agried with Capt. Coffin to Build the forte 
abovit the meeting house on dover neck, on [one] hundred foot 
square with two Sconces of sixteen foot square and all the timber 
to [be] twelfe Inches thicke and the Wall to be Eight foot hige 
[high] with sells and Braces, and the sellecktmen with the melle- 
torey ofecers have agreed to pay him an hundred pounds in day 
workes at 2s 6d p day and alsoe to all persons Concerned in the 
woi'kes on day to help to Rayse the work at so many on day as he 
shall appoynt. 



24 

of two hundred years, recalls the hardships, the stout heart- 
edness, and the faith in God, of your ancestry ! 

When Reid and Stark commanded the New Hampshire 
men at Bunker Hill, it was just a century since the Indian 
w^ars began in Dover ; and of that century, thirty-seven 
years had been years of war, and of the thirty-seven, twen- 
tj^-six years had been years of war on Dover soil. 

It began in 1675. Dover then comprised four recognized 
parts : the Neck, the Newington side, Oyster River, and 
Cochecho. Neither of these fully escaped, but the weight 
of war fell upon Oyster River and Cochecho. A hundred 
and forty-six tax-paying males were then on the rolls of 
these four parts, fifty-one of whom were in Oyster River 
district. Forty families called Cochecho their home, reach- 
ing from Bellamy to Quamphegan and Salmon Falls, their 
centre being the trading post close by the saw-mill and the 
grist-mill which stood where the great cotton mills now 
stand. 

It is fashionable to talk of aggressions upon Indian hunt- 
ino" grounds ; fishionable, but, so far as our Dover ancestors 
were concerned, it is false. They bought the lands of the 
Indians. For forty years they had held them, and when the 
Indians began the war, our ancestors had not gone a single 
rod beyond the lands thus purchased, forty years before. 
There was not an Indian warrior dispossessed of a foot of 
the land he claimed by reason of roaming over it as fish 
roam through the sea ; there was not a squaw dispossessed 
of a fishing place or a corn-interval. The wars were excited 
by French emissaries, and fostered by the native Indian bar- 
bai'ity. 

Dover was a frontier settlement. Between it and Canada 
there was not a hut of a white man, nor the sound of his 
axe in the forest. The Indians were skilled in the use of 
fire-arms. They knew every path in the woods. Then, for 
fifty years, the people never, knew what security was. 



25 

From behind any tree might at any time come the whiz of 
the musket. In the darkness which preceded the moi-ii of 
any day, might their slumbers be broken by the war-whoop. 
Farewell to quiet. They went armed to the house of God. 
They went armed to the planting-field. They went armed 
into the woods. By night they crowded into the heavily 
palisaded garrison houses. Age or sex was no security. 
No one could foresee the attack. The woods were all open 
to the enemy. The Ossipee Ponds might be a rendezvous. 
The Winnepesaukee trail might be the road. The meadows 
of Pequawket might be the place of the council-fire. Down 
from the streams of the Cochecho might come the sudden , 
foe. The woods of Lee might harbor the enemy. It might 
be that months or years of peace would make men careless ^ 
and in a night the treacherous foe be upon them and a house 
be in flames ; or in the day, the fire of hidden muskets 
slauo-hter them. It was a warfare of the most harassing 
and exhausting kind. They met an enemy without honor^ 
and to whom no treaty obligations were sacred. 

It is not in my plan, if it were possible for me, even to 
sketch the outline of the Indian wars which made our soil 
red from 1675 to 1725, — the last year in which Dover men 
were slain on Dover territory. I will barely touch upon it.. 
They began in 1675 at Oyster River ; then attacked at Sal- 
mon Falls ; then back at Oyster River ; then in scattered 
parties on single houses. Here one day, and ten miles oif 
the next, — our men knew not where to strike, or to ward 
off a blow. In the course of the many years, there were 
nine attacks, — on the east side of Garrison Hill; on the 
Upper Factory road ; on the Madbury road ; down at Cam- 
pian's rocks on the lower Cochecho ; an ambush where your 
First Parish church stands, killing a group of men and wom- 
en as they returned from church on a Sunday ; up by the 
Isinglass ; in the Ricker field ; near Bellamy ; by the 
Hutchin's garrison in Oyster River ; on Back River. In 



26 

fact, it is hard to find a road then opened,above Dover Neck, 
which was not at some time the scene of an ambush and a 
slaughter. Dover blood wet its soil in terrible profusion. 
Dover captives were led to Canada, — such as were not kill- 
ed on the way, — and sold to masters. Many were redeem- 
ed at great cost. Others remained there, Dover sons 
grew up there. Dover daughters married there. Parents 
here had the agonizing thought that their children were 
growing up aliens to them and to their race. To this day, 
Canadian families exist who are descended from our own 
ancestry. 

The severest assault on Cochecho ought to be remembered. 

If you look back to lGb9, you will find seven garrison 
houses at Cochecho. Richard Waldron's* was where Central 
Court leaves Central street, and there the stout old Major 
exercised his lavish hospitality, Payne's garrison was close 
to the site of the house of the late Capt. James Varney, on 
our " turnpike" road. Gerrish's was at Bellamy. The 
elder Coffin's stood on what was once a hill, on the north- 
west corner of Central and Orchard streets. The younger 
Coffin's was on the high ground near the late Gov. Martin's, 
and twenty years ago, men found its relics there, in digging. 
Richard Otis's stood opposite the Friend Ham house, and 
the late iSIichael Reade had in his boyhood seen the rem- 
nants of the cellar. Pleard's garrison was where the late 
Friend Bangs made his garden. These were all buildings 
surrounded by timber walls, and impregnable by open attack. 

Eleven years of profound peace had then passed at Co- 
checho. But a larger number of Indians were there than 
usual. Strange faces were among them. Some of the peo- 
ple, alarmed, came to Waldron. " Go plant your pump- 
kins," said he, carelessly ; " I will tell you when the Indians 
will break out." On the evening of the 27th, a young man 



I 



* " Walderne" was the ancient name. 



27 

told him that the town was full of Indians, and that the peo- 
ple w^ere much alarmed. " I know the Indians veiy well," 
was the reply, ^' and there is no danger." Five days be- 
fore, two Penacook Indians warned ^Nlajor Henchman, of 
Clielmsford, that Coclieeho would be attacked. He notified 
the government at Boston, who sent a special messenger to 
Cochecho, whose message was endorsed " there with all 
possible speed." I have held the paper in my hands. The 
messenger would have been in season, but he was detained 
at Newbury ferry, and he arrived at Cochecho ten hours too 
late. 

On the evening of the 27th, two squaws applied at each 
garrison for liberty to sleep in them. It Avas not unusual, 
and they were admitted. The treacherous Mesandowit was 
at supper with ^Nlajor Waldron. " Brother Waldron," said 
he, " what w^ould you do if the strange Indians should 
come?" " I could assemble a hundred men by lifting up 
my finger," was the careless reply. 

In the dead hours before dawn, the squaws opened the 
gates. The Indians rushed in. The brave old Major awoke, 
and with his sword, single handed, drove them from room 
to room, till one came behind him, and stunned him with a 
hatchet. They placed him in a chair, on a table ; cut him 
across the breast, each one with a knife ; cut off his nose and 
ears and thrust them into his mouth ; and when he fell over, 
faint with loss of blood, one placed his own sword under 
him, and the old soldier fell and died. Such was Indian 
honor and humanity. 

Heard's garrison was s.nved by the plucky old Elder Wil- 
liam Wentworth, who, as the Indians were entering, pushed 
them out, shut the door, fell down against it, and held it 
till help came. But Otis's, and the Coffin's, were taken. 
Wiien the morning came, every house save Heard's, in Co- 
checho, and every mill, was in ashes ; twenty-three persons 
were dead, and twenty-nine were prisoners in the hands of 



28 

the Intlians. And wlien the settlers gathered from other 
parts of the town, and k)oked upon the ashes, the Indians 
were far on their way towards the Winnepesaukee. 

On the 18th March, 1690-1, Sahnon Falls was attacked 
with equal suddenness, by the Frenchman Hertel,and amixed 
party. Upwards of twenty houses were burned, and near a 
hundred persons killed or made captive, including nearly 
thirty able bodied men. 

On the 17th May, 1094, a similar destruction befell Oyster 
River. Five garrisons were destroyed, a tract of six miles 
was desolated, and ninety-four persons were killed or made 
captive. 

These were the severest blows. But alarms did not 
cease, nor men, women and children cease to fall, until Do- 
ver ceased to be a frontier town. About 1725, the next 
tier of towns be^an to be, and the savages fell back from 
our soil. 

It is impossible to tell the number of persons slain in this 
fifty years, but there was scarcely an old Dover family that 
had not its record of the dead. The sufferings of captives, 
the loss of industry, were great. But amidst all this, not a 
foot of gi'ound was yielded. Not a homestead was aban- 
doned. Many a party of ours ravaged the woods, and many 
an Indian fell. Gradually the Indians were driven back by 
the musket. Their corn-fields were burnt. Their tempora- 
ry settlements were broken up. Not long after the year 
1700, the Indians wei*e forced to abandon Pequawket, and 
drew back to Canada. Their numbers were diminished. 
Their strength was broken ; and the number of men in old 
Dover had increased from 146, in 1675, to 466. 

War is always stern. Stern, even against a civilized en- 
emy. But that was an enemy faithless to every promise 
and treaty ; an enemy who loved to scalp a woman, or dash 
out the brains of an infant airainst a tree : an enemv whose 
highest enjoyment was in binding a captive to the stake, 



29 

piercing him with pine splinters, which they set on fire; 
torturing- him with every invention of ingenuity while they 
roasted him to death. Such was the enemy which your an- 
cestors met. Whoever may sentimentalize over the Indian 
character, it is not me ! I have read Dover history ; its tra- 
ditions and legends of the families which suffered. The 
Indian of that time was treacherous, cruel, blood-thirsty, 
a barbarian, whose extermination became as needful as that 
of the wild animals of the woods. Tliere are doubtless dif- 
ferences in the characteristics of different tribes ; some have 
proved capable of improvement. But the proper solution 
of the Indian question of to-day is, turn them over to the 
War Department ! If they will be peaceable, feed them if 
hungry, civilize them, educate them. Certainly, be just 
with them. But let the hand that feeds be the hand that 
can punish. Stop the wicked practice of supplying them 
with arms to shoot white men with. Stop the absurdity 
of acknowledging anybody within the United States as 
capable of making treaties. vStop allowing any band of 
savages to defy the power of this great country. 

Our ancestors came to regard an Indian as safest when 
he was dead. It was natural. When that Indian — in time 
of peace — would dash in, seize little children and cut off 
their heads before their mother's face, as was done a mile 
up your Upper Factory road, from our Falls; when they 
would seize the children of a peaceful Quaker family who 
had fed them, and scalp them before their mother's eyes, as 
they did at the Hanson's, on the Knox Marsh road, a mile 
from here ; when they would chain a man to a building and 
set it on fire and dance around his agonies, and that in a 
time of profound peace, as they did where your American 
House now stands ; when they would, in peace-time, come 
in and show the scalps and boast how they had killed one's 
own father, and scalped one's own mother, and cut into one's 
own child, — it took more patience than falls to the lot o{ 



30 

man, not to regard the Indian as an enemy with whom the 
best remedy was an ounce of lead at siglit. One can not 
but sympathize with that Hanson Quaker, to whom his rehi- 
tives went for safety, wiio, our historian says, had a number 
of lusty sons, who, although Friends, always kept fire-arms 
to shoot game with ! 

Then cauie the French wars. The war was no longer at 
our Dover. It was carried to the French provinces, which 
partially felt what they had inflicted u[)on others. I can 
stop only to say that men of our ancient Dover were in the 
assault on Port Royal, in 1707, wliere Major Shadrach 
Walton (I venture to add that he was an ancestor of mine) , 
a son of an early Dover settler, and Capt. Chesley, of the 
Durham section, did the only creditable thing there ; they 
formed their companies on the open beach, charged on the 
enemy who were behind a sea-wall, and carried the position 
by assault. Our men were in the attack on Norridgewock, 
in 1T22. They were scouts in all the wars following. In 
1745, at the capture of Louisburg, Dover furnished a com- 
pany led by Captain Thomas Westbrook Waldron, great- 
grandson of the old iNIajor slain in the massacre of 1689, 
and the one who built the Waldron house still standing, 
alas, that it must be said, on Second street. 01<1 Dover 
furnished two companies for Crown Point, in 17.")5 ; and 
another the same year for Albany, under Paul Gerrish. In 
the expedition against Crown Point in IToG, Sanuiel Ger- 
rish led one company, and brave John Titcomb another ; 
that John Titcomb wlio lived in the orio^inal buildino; which 
grew into the Dover Hotel, and of whose descendants is the 
wife of Prof. John R. Varney. In 1757, the western part 
of Dover sent a company, and John Titcomb commanded a 
second. It was part of this battalion, which, after the sur- 
render of Fort William Henry, was abandoned by JNIont- 
calm to the Indians, who killed eighty out of the one hun- 
dred and twenty New Hampshire men. Immediately, old 



31 

Dover furnished more men, and stout Major Thomas Tash 
led a battalion ; the brave soldier who became a Colonel in 
the war of the Revolution ; whose great grandson , George 
W. Tash, is now one of your citizens. John Titcomb was 
lieutenant-colonel of still another regiment raised in New 
Hampshire, on whose rolls I find many Dover men. Col. 
Atkinson's regiment, for Canada in 1759, which served at 
the reduction of Fort Niagara, had Dover recruits. In Col. 
Goffe's regiment for the invasion of Canada, in 1760, was 
one company whose roll is full of Dover names, Dover 
men were at the capture of Ticonderoga, and in the reduc- 
tion of Canada ; and by the latter, the many years of a war 
which began at their own doors in the times of their grand- 
sires, and which had summoned three generations to the 
field, ended iu tlie homes of their old invaders. 

It was through such conflicts that these generations were 
prepared for the war of the Ke volution. 

And so they came to the Revolution. Their ancestors 
were men of hardy mould ; imbued ^with the democratic 
spirit ; knew no distinction of rank ; established local and 
free government ; maintained their rights ; and defended 
their possessions and their lives through generations of In- 
dian war, and years of war against the French source of 
their hardships. The generation then living inherited their 
principles and their vigor, and at once took its place in 
stubborn resistance to the British ministry. 

IV. The tea-question was before the public. There- 
fore, on the lOth of January, 1774, a legal town meeting 
convened, — strangely enough, at the Friend's meeting- 
house, — " to consider of the innovations attempted to be 
made on American Privileges." Col. Otis Baker was mod- 
erator. The temperate, but firm resolves adopted at this 
meeting should be presented entire : 



32 

Althouo-h we clepi'ecate eveiy thing which in its infant motions 
tends to alienate the affection which ought to subsist among the 
suhjects of the same King, yet, we cannot longer behold the Arts 
used to curtail the Friviledges purchased with the blood and treas- 
ure of British America, and of Xew England in particular, for their 
Posterity, Avithout bearing our Testimony against tliem. 

As these colonies have recognized the Protestant Kings of Great 
Britain as their Lawful Sovereign, and WE in this Province the 
Man whom the King has pleased to send us as his Representative — 
We acknowledge this Representative from our first formation into 
a Government has had a negative voice on all Bills proposed by 
Laws in the manner his Majesty has at home. 

And as it dotli not appear that any Parliaments have been parties 
to any Contracts made with the European Settlers in this once 
howlino" Wilderness, now become a pleasant field — We look on our 
Rio-hts too dearly bought, to admit them now as Tax masters — 
Since (by laws as firm as the honor of crowned heads can make 
them, and which we have no Apprehension so good qind gracious a 
Kino- as we obey, will sufter to be abridged) we have Parliaments 
ot our own — who always with the greatest Cheerfulness furnished 
his Majesty such Aids as he has been pleased to require from time 
to time according to the Abilities of the People, and even beyond 
them, of which, none but themselves could be adequate Judges. 

Why the King's Subjects in Great Britain should frame Laws for 
his Subjects in America, rather than the reverse, we cannot well 
conceive, as we do not admit it to be drawn from any Pact made 
by our ancestors, or from the Nature of the British Constitution, 
which makes Representation essential to Taxation — and this sup- 
posed Power of Parliament for taxing America is quite novel, some 
few Instances for the better Regulation of Trade excepted, which 
no more prove their supposiid Right, than the Tortious Entry of a 
Keio-hbor into the Infiint's field does that of the Intruder— but if 
Superior Strength be the best plea, how would they relish the Al- 
ternative? which if political Arithmetic deceives not advances with 
Hasty Strides ; tho' nothing but downright oppression will ever ef- 
fect it. 

Therefore, Resolved, lly. That any attempt to take the Proper- 
ty of any of the King's Subjects for any purpose whatever where 
they are not represented, is an Infraction of the English Constitu- 
tion • and manifestly tends as well to destroy it, as the subject's 
private property, of which recent proofs are plenty. 

Resolved 2ly, That We, and our American Brethren, are the 



33 

liege People of King George the Third, and therefore have as full, 
and ample a Claim, to all the Priviledges and Immunities of Eng- 
lishmen, as any of his Subjects three thousand miles distant — the 
Truth of which, our Demeanor clearly evinces. 

Resolved Sly, That the Parliament in Britain by suffering the 
East India Company to send us their Teas subject to a Duty on 
landing, have in a measure testified a Disregard to the Interests of 
Americans, whose liberal Services ill deserve such ungenerous 
Treatment. 

Resolved 41y, That we are of opinion that any seeming Supine- 
ness of this Province in these very — vei-y interesting matters, hath 
proceeded from a Consideration of their Smallness among their 
Brethren, rather than from any insensibility of impending Evils. 

Resolved 51y, That this Town approves the general Exertions, 
and noble struggles, made by the opulent Colonies tlwough the 
Continent, for preventing so fixtal a Catastrophe as is implied in 
Taxation without Representation, viz : Slavery — than which, to a 
generous Mind, Death is more Eligible. 

Resolved 61y, That We are, and always will be ready in every 
constitutional Way, to give all the Weight in our Power to avert 
so dire a Calamity. 

Resolved 71y, That a Dread of being enslaved Ourselves, and 
of transmitting the Chains to our Posterity (by which we should 
justly merit their curses) is the principal Inducement to these 
Measures. 

And Whereas, our house of Commons have a Committee for cor- 
responding with those of the several Colonies on these matters, and 
the Committees of the several Towns in this Government to corres- 
pond with each other at the necessary Times, may be subservient 
to the common Cause — Therefore resolved that a Committee to con- 
sist of five persons be chosen for that purpose. 

Voted that Col. Otis Baker, Capt. Caleb Hodgdon, Capt. Stephen 
Evans, Capt. Joshua Wingate, and John Wentworth, jr., or either 
three of them, be the Committee of Correspondence for this Town. 

Voted that the proceedings of this meeting be entered in the 
Records of this Town, and that an attested Copy thereof be sent 
to the Committee of Correspondence at Portsmouth, to assure 
them, and all concerned, that our hearts are knit with those who 
wish the weal (as it is constitutionally fixed) of our most gracious 
Sovereign, and all his numerous subjects. 



34 

Another town meeting was held July 18, 1774. It was 
for 

appointing Delegates to join in a general Congress of the Prov- 
inces for considering of and advising to the most conciliatory 
methods of establishing their rights and harmony among all the 
subjects of our gracious Sovereign, which meeting is proposed to 
be held on the 1st September, at Philadelphia. 

On the 7th of November followino;, a meeting was held 
to see if the inhabitants would raise any thing, " either in 
Money, Fat Cattle or Sheep," for the relief of the poor in 
Boston, then suffering by the operation of the Port Bill. 
And Dover furnished its contribution. 

On the 2Gth of December, the town voted thus : 

The Designs of the Continental Congress holden at Philadelphia 
being so humane and benevolent, the result of tlieir proceedings so 
salutary and effective as justly to attract the notice of the millions 
of freemen in America, this town on mature consultation are fully 
convinced that nothing (under Heaven) will so evidently tend to 
preserve the rights of Americans or frustrate the attempts already 
made for their destruction, as carrying the same into full execu- 
tion. For which purpose, 

Voted, That Messrs. Otis Baker, Shadrach Ilodgdon, Stephen 
Evans, Joshua Wingate, John Waldron, 3d, Caleb Hodgdon, John 
Wentworth, jr., John Kielle, and John Gage, be a committee. 

But before this last mentioned action, a daring and de- 
cisive step had been taken in Xew Hampsliire, in whose ac- 
complishment citizens of Durham, our old Oyster Kiver 
part of Dover, shared the risk and the glory. 

On the thirteenth of December, 1774, into Portsmouth 
came riding tiiat gallant rider, Paul Revere. He brought 
from William Cooper, of Boston, an official dispatch to Sam- 
uel Cutts, of the local committee. The king in council had 
prohibited the exportation of military stores from Enghind, 
and orders were out to seize all munitions of war in the col- 
onies. He brought also the rumor that two royal regiments 



35 

were to be sent to the Pi^^cataqua. The committee met and 
decided. It sent despatches to the neighboring towns. 
John Sullivan, of Durham, was notified, and led tvv(mty 
men. It was determined to seize Fort William and Mary. 
The movement was to be open. John Langdon, then an 
officer of militia, and John Sidlivan, who was then drillino' 
a volunteer company in anticipation of war, were leaders. 
Gov. Wentworth knew of the plan, and inf)rmed the cum- 
mander of the fort. " About twelve o'clock" of the next 
day, wrote the Governor to the Earl of Dartmouth six days 
later, " news was brought to me that a drum was beatino- 
about the town to collect the populace together in order to 
take away the gunpowder and dismantle the fort. ... I 
sent the chief-justice to warn them from engaging in such an 
attempt. He went to them, told them it was not short of 
rebellion, and entreated them to desert from it and disperse. 
But all to no purpose. They went to the island ; they 
forced the entrance in spite of Capt. Cochran, who defended 
it as long as he could. They secured the captain, triumph- 
antly gave three huzzas, and hauled down the king's col- 
ors." And the helpless governor soon issued a proclamation 
which begins : " Whereas, several bodies of men did in the 
daytime," etc., etc. 

This capture was in the afternoon of the 14th of Decem- 
ber, an open and determined attack. 

Said the commander of tiie fort, in his official report, 
dated the same day : 

I prepared to make the best defence I could, and pointed some 
guns to those places where I expected they would enter. About 
three o'clock, the fort was beset on all sides by upwards of five 
hundred men. I told them on their peril not to enter. They re- 
plied they would. I immediately ordered three four-pounders to 
be fired on them, and then the small anus, and before we could be 
ready to fire again, we were stormed on all quarters, and immedi- 
ately they secured me angl my men, and kept us prisoners about 



36 

one hour and a half, during which time they broke upon the pow- 
der-house, and took all the poAvder away except one barrel. 

Ninety-seven barrels of powder were taken away, and on 
the night of the 15th, the patriots returned and carried off all 
the arms that could be moved. 

How men were raised for the expedition ; how that pow- 
der was afterwards taken up to Durham in boats, in a bitter- 
ly cold night, the men not allowed to wear shoes lest a spark 
from the nails should ignite the powder ; how most of it was 
hidden under the old pulpit from which the patriotic Adams 
preached ; how the New Hampshire men's powder horns 
were filled from it when they started for Cambridge, and 
how John Demeritt, of Durham, hauled thither an ox-cart 
load, arriving just in season to have it served out for Bun- 
ker Hill — was written out for me twenty years ago, from the 
lips of Eleazer Bennett, then near a hundred years old, who 
was probably the last survivor of that daring expedition. 
And that powder supplied the two New Hampshire regi- 
ments at Bunker Hill, which, attacked by the veteran Welsh 
Fusileers, were commanded by James Reid and John 
Stark, and made such slaughter of the best English troops. 

The daring character of this assault can not be over-esti- 
mated. It was an organized investment of a royal fortress, 
where the King's flag was flying, and where the King's 
garrison met them with muskets and artillery. It was four 
months before Lexino-ton ; and Lexinfrton was a resistance 
to attack, while this was a deliberate assault. It was six 
months before Bunker Hill. I fail to find anywhere in the 
colonies, so early an armed assault upon the royal authority. 
So far, it must be held that the first action in arms, of the 
Revolutionary war, was in New Hampshire, and by New 
Hampshire patriots. This attack was treason. It exposed 
every man concerned in it to the penalty of treason. When 
the war-vessels came, a few days after, the men of the little 



37 

garrison were placed on board, to be kept as witnesses in the 
expected trials. When the King heard of this capture, it 
so embittered him that all hope of concessions was at an 
end. It made war inevitable. But the trials for treason 
never took place. The then governor, John "Wentworth, 
the best of all the royal governors of that day, — descended 
from that William Wentworth who was Elder of our Dover 
first church, and of the same blood with that Earl of Straf- 
ford who was beheaded in the time of the first Charles, and 
with the British premier the ]Marquis of Rockingham, — soon 
sailed away, never again to set foot upon his native soil. 
John Langdon, after gallant service in the war, and priceless 
service in its civil support, became governor, and the first 
President of the Senate of the United States. John Sulli- 
van, then a lawyer in Durham, was son of that John Sulli- 
van who was once school- master of the town of Dover and 
who was the father of governors, and our local traditions 
insist was born on our side of the Salmon Falls. To him 
the refugee Livius, wrote from Montreal, in 1777, urging his 
return to the royal cause, promising him particular reward, 
and saying, " You were the first man in active rebellion," 
and Livius had fled from Portsmouth. Sullivan became 
Major-General, and governor of his State. Winborn 
Adams, also of Dover blood, was lieutenant-colonel when 
he met his death at Stillwater. Alexander Scammel, of that 
Durham party, was Adjutant-General of the army when he 
fell at Yorktown. Demeritt, Griffin, Bennett, Chesley, 
Noble and Durgin, of that expedition, all did service in the 
army of the Revolution.* 

When news came of the slaughter at Concord, New 
Hampshire was aroused. ]Men collected from every quarter. 



* I have been the more minute in relation to the above attack, 
because a grossly incorrect accomit has been circulating in news- 
papers, as part of our centennial literature. 



38 

" It is surprisino;," wrote Col. John "Wentworth, April 
25th, " tc see the number who collected. Some came to 
Dover twenty miles or more." Shadrach Hodgdon and 
Stephen Evans represented Dover in the convention of the 
<' Friends of Liberty," which met at Exeter on the 13th of 
May. That convention voted to raise two thousand men, 
and to accept those who had already hiu'ried to the field. 
Three regiments were raised. Stark's and Reid's had the 
glory of fighting at Bunker Hill. The other, the Second, 
Col. Poor's, was largely on duty on the coast, from Odi- 
rne's Point to the IMerrimr.ck. ]\Iost of the Dover soldiers 
were in that Second, but there were scattering recruits in 
the Third, certainly. In the Second, was the company of 
Capt. Winhorn Adams, — John Griffin, first lieutenant, 
Zehulon Drciv, second lieutenant, — from Durham, which 
was at Bunker Hill. In the same regiment was Capt. Jon- 
athan Wentivorth, "old Colonel Jonathan" of Rollinsford, 
— James Carr, first lieutenant, Jethro Heard, second 
lieutenant. He made a forced march of sixty-two miles 
previous to the battle of Bunker Hill, and arrived in Chel- 
sea on that morning, but could not cross the river, on ac- 
count of the enemy, and went round by way of INIedford. 
Jonathan Wentworth was adjutant of Col. Evans' regiment 
at the capture of Burgoyne ; and in 1778 was on the staflTof 
Sullivan, with the rank of lieutanant-colonel. His posteri- 
ty are here. He had two brothers in service, one of whom 
died in the army. In the Third regiment was Ezra Greeny 
its surgeon, well-known to many of you, who had passed 
his hundred years when he died in our town. He served on 
land until 1778, and then sailed with John Paul Jones, and 
was surgeon of the Ranger in its great battle. Immedi- 
ately after the l)attle of Bunker Hill, reinforcements went 
forward. I find in Belknap's diary, on the second da^^ aft- 
er the battle, " Benj. Titcomb's co. marched from here." 
This was that Benjainia Titcomh, brother of old Col. 



39 

John, who afterwards became lieutenant-colonel, and one 
of the most gallant men in the army. Though severely- 
wounded in three different battles, he served through the 
war, and ended his days here at his house by Dunn's bridge. 
His descendants are still in Dover. With him in 1775, 
was his first lieutenant, Frederick Mordantt Bell, who, a 
captain in 1777, was mortally wounded at Stillwater. His 
granddaughter is still here. Ephraim Evans was second 
lieutanant in the same company. The present Dover also 
raised at (mce another coin[)any, — John Waldron, captain, 
Timothy Boherf.s, first lieutenant, Pmil Wellard, second 
lieutenant, Jolni Heard, ensign, — and sent it to Cambridge, 
mustered iu July 3, 1775. 

In 1775, the six towns which composed ancient Dover 
had, between the ages of sixteen and fifty, 1,070 men, in- 
cluding the sick, the feeble, the exempt, and the sailors off 
at sea. Of this number, in the early autumn of that year, 
one hundred and fifty, or nearly one seventh of the whole, 
had shouldered the musket and were actually in the field. 
It was evidence of the same alacrity which caused New 
Hampshire to furnish more than half the men who fought 
the battle of Bunker Hill, at the very gates of Boston. 

It has often been wondered how a raw militia could so 
stand before veterans. Much of our New Hampshire force 
was no raw militia. John Stark was no novice in war. 
Many of our men had confronted the best troops of the 
King of France, and sat down before his strongest fortifica- 
tions. They took down their old " Queen's arms," and 
marched to Massachusetts in behalf of liberty. When at 
Bunker Hill, Stark coolly went out in front of the line, and 
drove down a stick, and said, " Don't fire a gun, boys, till 
they pass that stick and I say the word," there were veterans 
enough there to know what discipline was, and they waited ! 

Late in 1775, express came to New Hampshire, with the 
information that the Connecticut troops had refused to re- 



40 

main in service. Washington made an urgent appeal to 
New Hampsliire for men, and Sullivan added his influence. 
Thirty- one companies volunteered and marched to Cam- 
bridge. In this force were the companies of Elijah Dins- 
more, of Lee, Alj)heus Chesley, of Durham, Moses 
Yeato7i. of Somersworth, and John Waldron, of Dover. 
In December, 1775, New Hampshire had in the field over 
five thousand men ! John Waldron was in service when 
the exigency arose. He came home to Dover to raise re- 
cruits. Of his own company, Ebenezer Iticker was first 
lieutenant, and John Goodwin, was second lieutenant. 
Tradition has told us that in four days he and his se- 
lected officers enlisted in this vicinity seven hundred men, 
which he commanded as Colonel. The roster does not ap- 
pear on our Adjutant-General's books, and I had therefore 
doubted the truth of his colonelcy ; but documents recently 
produced show him at Cambridge the next spring, in com- 
mand of his regiment, and with the missing roster. The 
energetic Col. John Waldron lived where the late Taylor 
Page lived, above Garrison Hill. The son of Harrison Ha- 
ley, o^ this city, is the grandson of the Colonel's grandson. 
An entry in Belknap's diary says: " Dec. 9, 1775, dined 
at Capt. John Waldron's, and prayed in the companies." 
The companies of the upper vicinity were, therefore, camp- 
ed at Waldron's. When you pass there again, recall how 
our fathers pitched their tents there, on that higli ground 
looking down into Dover. They saw then but one spire, if 
the parish church had one. They looked down on a few 
score of houses. " Route step, march ! " As they obeyed, 
with flint lock guns at a shoulder, and powder horns by 
their side, they passed beautiful Garrison Hill, and its few 
houses, and the spot where Heard's garrison had stood out 
ao'ainst the savages eighty-six years before, almost as lonely 
as then. From that spot, they found no houses till the site 
of Otis's garrison, the scene of barbarous slaughter in 1G89. 



41 

And next was tlie then elegant mansion of the old soldier of 
Louisburg, Thomas Westbrook Waldron. They crossed 
the then new upper bridge (no historian tells us whether its 
piers were of faced stone or of crib-work!), and they saw 
only a grist-mill and a savv-niill on the dam which then fret- 
ted the waters of the Cochecho. They passed over a hill 
in front of the place where Varney's block now stands, and 
saw one house high up on the side of the road, where Cof- 
fin's garrison had once fallen. Crossing the gully, they 
must have stopped in front of the first house reached, that of 
John Wentworth, jr., that old house still standing next, 
south of the Belknap church, and saluted the youthful patri- 
ot- lawyer, whose heart was alive in the Cause. Then the 
houses became more plentiful, and they passed in front of 
the Dover Hotel, then in its early prosperity; and so went 
on the Durham road, and on to the siege of Boston. Did 
the children wonder, or was it to them only a parade like 
the often one of the old Second regiment, which used to 
form on the then open ground next the Hotel? Did wives, 
and daughters, and sisters, and sweethearts, turn away and 
weep for the men of whom some should never return ? The 
cost of war is not in money, though you throw away mil- 
lions a day in powder and shell. It is not in the loss of 
productive industry, though it takes thousands of men out 
of that industry. It is in suffering on the field, in the 
graves of the gallant dead ; in the shattered health of the 
surviving; in woman's tears, and orphans' needs ! The men 
who have seen War, are the men who have no relish for an- 
other. 

It is not my purpose to follow the history of the seven 
years' struggle. With the statement that the towns which 
made ancient Dover did their full share, I can barely men- 
tion the names of a few others who did service. I see the 
name of Hercules Mooney, of Lee. He had been a cap- 
tain under Col. Meserve, in 1757. In 1777, he was lieu- 



42 

tenant-colonel in Col. Lonir's regiment, at Ticonderoga, 
and in 1779, was colonel, and commanded a regiment. In 
Col. Long's regiment was also Lieut. Samuel StacTcpole^ 
also at Ticonderoga, and later under Washington further 
south. Dr. Paul A. Stackpole, of tliis city, is his grand- 
son. In September, 1776, Col. Thomas Tccsh, the old 
French war soldier, led a regiment to reinforce the Conti- 
nental army, which with others joined ^yasllingtoIl in Penn- 
sylvania, and was at Trenton and Princeton. Josejih 
Smith was his adjutant, and Jonathan Ghesley, his quar- 
ter-master. Timothy White, who had been at the cap- 
ture of Louisburg, was quarter-master of Col. Joshua 
Wino-ate's reaiment, raised for Canada, but which joined 
the northern army in New York. Hon. John H. Wiiite, 
of this city, is Timothy White's grandson. Dr. Samuel 
Wigglesrvath was Surgeon of that regiment. Lieut. 
Enoch Chase, of Dover, was with Winborn Adams and 
Benjamin Titcomb and Frederick M. Bell, and was in the 
Burgoyne campaign. He was captain in 1780 and '81. 
Mrs. J. B. H. Odiorne is his granddaughter. In Moses 
Yeaton's company, in 1775, was lieutenant Samuel Wal- 
lingford. He was captain in Col. Oilman's regiment in 
1776, (James JVute, his first lieutenant,) and was lieutenant 
of marines on Jones' Banger, in 1778, when he fell in its 
action Avith the Drake. Col. Stejjhen Evans, a soldier at 
the capture of Louisburg, commanded a regiment at the 
capture of Burgoyne. He was a colonel on the staff of Gen. 
Whipple, in 1778. He lived to a ripe old age, and his 
descendants are with us. Alpheus Chesley was lieuten- 
ant-colonel in Col. Waldron's regiment in 1776, and 
Jonathan Chesley was quartei'-master under Col. Win- 
gate, in 1778. William Twombly was ensign in Col, 
Reid's regiment in 1777 and later. Numerous descendants 
are still here. Of the Dover company in Col. Evans' regi- 
ment in the Burgoyne campaign, James Lihhy was captain, 



43 

Joshna Roberts, first lieutenant, Natlinn Horn, second 
lieutenant, and Francis Warren, ensign. 

I wish I could give the record of others, and of the rank 
and file from Dover in the war, but it is impossible. The 
rolls have not been preserved. I wish that I could also 
give the record of the sailors who went from Dover, but 
that is also impossible. Of these, it can only be said tliat 
the large number of volunteers from Dover proved worthy 
of their descent from the hardy emigrants who came from 
the niaratime counties of England. Researclies may yet 
find the details, before your history is written. 

But three men should be mentioned who were not in the 
army. Col, John Wejitworth, of Rollinsford, was Speak- 
er of the House, in 1771, and to the couunencement of the 
Revolution. Of the same name with the governor, andof the 
same blood, his position was peculiar. He proved true and 
efficient. He was President of tlie several Provincial Con- 
ventions which met in 1774-5. On the 11th of June, 1774, 
he wrote to the Massachusetts committee : 

A rivetted opinion of the good and gracious intentions of our 
lawful sovereign constrains me to believe that, to reinstate in his 
royal favor, he needs only to be divested of the unfavorable im- 
pressions of America's inveterate foes, whose secret machinations 
evidently tend to disunite what, when disunited, will be no longer 
powei-ful. 

The sons of freedom in New Hampshire, I believe, sympathize 
with your metropolis in its present distress. So mighty a display 
of ministei ial vengeance can be accounted for only from your no- 
ble efforts to stem the torrent of oppression. 

He died in 1781, and thus did not live to see our inde- 
pendence acknowledged. 

His son, John Wentworth, jr., of Dover, was the only 
lawyer in Strafford county, except John Sullivan. One of 
the Dover committees of correspondence, January 10,1774, 
he represented the town in the Assembly from 1776 to 1781, 



44 

and was then transferred to the Council, to succeed his 
father. Records indicate that his service was important in 
shaping legishition, and drafting papers, during this critical 
period of history. In 1778, he represented New Hamp- 
shire in the Continental Congress, and affixed his name to 
the old Articles of Confederation. " His father's blood," 
said Governor Lanodon, " runs throuoh all his veins." 
Hon. John AYentworth, ll. d., of Chicago, is his grandson. 

Jeremy Belknap was then minister of Dover. I have 
found it a pleasure to examine his manuscript sermons* of 
the Revolutionary period, for quotation on this occasion, 
but I leave this field mainly to my friend. Rev. George B. 
Spalding, minister of the same church, who is specially to 
treat this part of our revolutionary liistory. I will quote 
but little, and that only because it is necessary to show what 
was the tone of the Dover pulpit in that day, and because 
Benjamin Franklin said that the pen of Jeremy Belknap 
did as nmch for the cause of American liberty as that of 
any other person. 

On the 14th of July, 1774, at this early stage of af- 
fairs, his text was significant: "And ye shall cry out in 
that day because of your King which ye shall have chosen 
you." His topic was, " Some general idea of tyranny and 
arbitrary power." I quote a few detached sentences : 

Nor indeed is it necessary to the being of civil gc vernment, that 
there should be any King at all. 

When a ruler departs from these [constitutional] principles, and 
sets up any other rule of government than the laws and constitu- 
tions which he is sworn to maintain, then the government degener- 
ates into tyranny. 

It is a very dark and distressing day to these American colonies. 
Burdens and taxes are laid upon us by the Parliament of Great 
Britain, and the most forcible attempts made to bring us to a sub- 



* Preserved in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Socie- 
ty, at Boston. 



45 

mission, and what further is intended, we know not, but have rea- 
son to fear much." 

On the 7th of November, 1774, there was to be a town 
meeting for procuring contributions for suffering Boston. 
On tlie day before, Mr. Belknap made an earnest appeal, 
and in it he says : 

It is a wise and politic maxim that the King can do no wrong, 
but it is a truth too well-known that his servants can do and have 
done wrong ; and because they are disposed to act the tyrant over 
us, must it be thought rebellion in us to oppose them? Every one 
knows that the mischief first began with them. They themselves ' 
know that they have done wrong, but they are too proud to retract 
their error. We may safely oppose the base and wicked designs 
of these men, and yet be true and loyal to the King; for the King 
himself is subject to the law and Constitution, and he is no longer a 
King than while he conforms to it. Therefore if his ministers have 
done wrong, it is our duty to do what we can to set them right. 

And our ancestors did set them right ! 

On the 22d of June, 1775, a Fast day, he says : 

The dispute is between tyranny and liberty. . . . The country 
was settled by our fathers at their own expense ; they spent their 
estates, they shed their blood, and wore out their lives, in procur- 
ing and establishing a quiet settlement in the wilderness. The na- 
tion of Great Britain has no right to our possessions, nor to take 
away any part of our substance without our consent. The issue is 
now to be tried by the sword. There is no party to judge between 
us, but the supreme God, to whom we make the last solemn ap- 
peal. 

Such were the calm, but firm utterances of the Dover 
pulpit in the commencement of the struggle. Their minis- 
ter steadily stimulated the people, and equally firmly re- 
buked their own faults. One further extract is interesting. 
In an early sermon he says : 

Would it not be astonishing to hear that a peoj^le who are con- 
tending so earnestly for liberty are not willing to allow liberty to 



46 

others? Is it not astonishing to think that there are at this day In 
tlie several colonies upon this continent, some thousands of men, 
women, and children, detained in bondage and slavery for no other 
crime than that their skin is of a darker color than ours? Such is 
the inconsistency in our conduct! 

Belknap never ceased to be an outspoken advocate of 
liberty. He did it at his cost. AVliat it" he iiad looked for- 
ward, and instead of " some thousands," had seen three 
millions of slaves? Had he seen in pi'ophecy this same viola- 
tion of principle the occasion of seven years of internal 
w^ar, in which a million of men should be under arms at 
once, and an aggregate of a million of graves the result of 
the strife, what intensity of sorrow would have imbued his 
warning cry ! 

And now after the lapse of the hundred years; we meet 
the questions, What was the root principle of our institu- 
tions? and, How has it worked? 

The answer to the first is easy. It was the entire equali- 
ty of all men before the law, and the utmost liberty- tt) the 
individual consistent with the rights of the whole. Doubt- 
less this principle was imperfectly realized, although theo- 
retically well stated, a hundred years ago. It is easier to 
see abstract principles, than to change existing institutions to 
conform to them. But I am sure that nowhere in America 
was the simple democratic doctrine more purely put into 
practice, than on the branches of the Piscataqua from the 
beginning. It was our ancestors' in the infancy of their 
settlement. They preserved it while united with Massachu- 
setts. It was substantially maintained during the period 
in Avhich [)eculiar royal favor, witii governors from one fam- 
ily for the fifty-nine years ending with the Declaration, and 
that family a branch of one whose blood had mingled with 
that of royalty, gave Now Hampshire almost a Provincial 
Court. This theory was therefore full-born in 177G. It 



47 

made the province of govci-nmeiit to be the protection of all 
persons in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but 
then to leave all persons untrammelled to develop themselves. 
To protect any class, or any man, or any set of interests, 
beyond the general protection of the w^hole,was not its work. 
It threw the duty of self-government on all limited localities 
so far as is practicable ; while it made a national union with 
which to preserve the unity of the whole at home and meet 
the woi'ld abroad. But beneath all, is the principle of in- 
dividual liberty and individual responsibility, on a ba- 
sis of entire equality. Therefore, laws intended to take care 
of people are foreign to its object. Special legislation, 
sumptuary laws, laws to regulate what a man shall eat, 
drink, or wear, enactments to do by statute what only moral 
principle can effect, are assumptions of doubtful power and 
are not American. Discriminations between men, either of 
race or color, are not American. The prejudice of caste, 
the domination of wealth, are not American. The grand 
principle of American liberty is not merely the liberty of 
the nation as a nation, but tlie equal rights of the individu- 
als. Every man is, before the law, the peer of every other. 
It rests with himself to develop his own manhood ; and the 
only true manhood is within the man ; not in fences, and 
bars, and props, external. The American idea is manhood. 

And yet, when I say manhood, I can not see why I should 
not also say womanhood. On the American theory of 
equality of rights, I must admit that there is no justice, aiid 
no justification for it, in denying to women, who nmst be 
taxed as men are, and who, if criminal, must suffer the 
penalty of the laws, an equal voice in making the laws 
whicii will tax her and punish her. 

How has the American theory worked in practice? I 
prefer to look at results rather than the steps which led to 
results, just now. I would read the last page rather than 
the volume. It is enough. 



48 

Men predicted that the new country could not hold to- 
gether. But when the war of the Revolution closed, we 
had no States which did not border on the Athmtic surf. 
To-day, the sun which greets our flag as it is rising out of 
the Atlantic, as it sets in the western sea looks back upon 
the same flag floating on the Pacific shore. The lower Mis- 
sissippi and Florida were then in the hands of foreign pow- 
ers ; now the American waters run from the northern lakes 
to the ^Mexican gulf. Then we emerged from war with 
three millions of impoverished people ; now forty millions 
scarcely occupy a domain whose imperial extent would 
maintain a thousand millions. 

Then, the waterfalls were scarcely used. The roads were 
difficult. The great inventions which annihilate space 
were unknown. Now, American genius and energy have 
utilized the white cotton fields, made wheat fields of the 
prairies, dotted the land with mills, covered the rivers with 
steamboats, and the iron road runs from the eastern to the 
western ocean. 

Then, a few large schools existed ; now, universities and 
colleges cover the land, and in most of the States, the schools 
give to the poorest the means of education. 

Then, the principle of separation of church and state was 
feared. As it developed, and as the trammels of public 
support were taken from chui'cbes of every name, they felt 
the inspiration of the thought that no civil power can inter- 
fere between a man's conscience and his God, and the church- 
es responded with \nighty vigor, and outran even the ad- 
vance of industry. 

Then, the principle of individual liberty was greatly nul- 
lified by African slavery. It was impossible that it and the 
great Declaration which declares all men free, could forev- 
er co-exist. The principle worked. And though at fearful 
cost, to-day there is not a man on the face of our land who 
can not stand up in his manhood, and claim the shelter of 



49 

the Stars and Stripes. There is not a native of any land 
on the face of the globe, who desires to be an American cit- 
izen, who cannot find a place under its generous folds. It 
remains only that the government shall preserve the liberty 
and right of every one of its citizens, at home and abroad. 
A government which does not do that is unworthy of its 
name. 

It was said that the principle of individual liberty was too 
centrifugal to allow a sti'ono- o-overnment. But we have a 
government that went through a war with the then mighti- 
est power of the earth, whose war vessels covered the seas,- 
and we extorted the principle that no more should a foreign 
power take from the deck of an American vessel any man of 
any birth. It went through a war with an American State, 
and our eagles marched victorious to the Mexican capital, 
and extorted redress for a multitude of injuries. It went 
through a sad internecine war, greater than which the world 
never saw ; it put into the field unsurpassed armaments ; 
well nigh drained the land of its men ; hurled re-inforce- 
ments of half-a-million at once into the contest ; fought on a 
hundred battle-fields ; covered the extended coast with iron- 
clad ships. Some Europeans exultingly cried, "The Ameri- 
can bubble has burst !" They mistook the golden truths, 
and thought they were a bubble ! The government stood 
the awful strain. It emerged from the fire and the smoke 
stronger than ever. Never before, also, did mighty armies 
yield up their power as ours did. The armies on both sides 
melted off as the March snows melt into the fertile soil. 
The soldiers went back to their work in life. And now you 
know not who they were, except as once a year the surviv- 
ors reverently go to the graves of their rapidly increasing 
dead, and remember affectionately their comrades of the 
march, the camp, the bivouac, the battle-field, who rise no 
more at the bugle's call till the reveille of the resurrection 
morning. Dover does notforget its Henderson, its Sawyer, 



50 

its Everett, its Roberts, its Buzzell, its Bryant, its Web- 
ster, its Emery, its Emerson, its Knott, or the eighty-three 
otlier dead, who fell for tlie flag. 

Yet glad are we that if that great strife was to come, it 
ended ten years before our centennial. The principle of 
national life that was involved, was thus settled, and it is 
no anxious query to-day, whether we are one people 
throughout the land, as it was twelve years ago. The 
principle of universal liberty that was involved was thus 
settled, and the bells can proclaim that liberty is throughout 
the land. Our flag, nigh a century old, floats unchallenged 
from the lakes to the gulf, and from ocean to ocean. It is 
the symbol of liberty and equality of rights. It is as free 
to the men who laid down their arms after their brave but 
unavailing struggle, as to any who fought under its folds. 
It is theirs as well as ours now. Ten years have softened 
asperities. Brave men recognize each other's bravery. You 
will not mistake my position, when I say, and say it with 
you, that we ask no apologies. We demand no sacrifice 
of pride even. All that a regenerated country asks is, that 
they who so heroically followed the red and white, — and I 
have seen it where death was busy, — shall follow as faith- 
fully the red, white and blue. For one, I have no fears. 
I would trust the flag in the keeping of honorable men of 
the South, the North, the East, the West, without suspicion, 
I fear no parties. There is no distinction, when we look at 
the Stars and Stripes. There are no partisans then. On 
this centennial year is the auspicious period when we leave 
in their grave our past contests of the armies, which settled 
ideas, and we pray for peace. 

I remember that once a gallant regiment was at home, 
re-enlisted. When I see its old flags in the State-House in 
Boston, I stand uncovered, and sometimes with moistened 
eyes. They were our flags ! We had one battle-flag 
which, when the regiment was temporarily at home, was 



51 

deposited in a careful house, whose family had special and 
sad reasons to honor it. But every day, the color-bearer 
would go to the chamber, and take down the rolled flag, 
and take off its sheath, and unroll it, and, standing off, look 
at it carefully, and then roll it up, and put it in its resting 
place. When asked why he did so, he answered, simply, 
' ' I could not sleep at night if I had not seen that the Flag 
was safe that day ! " 

The flag represents Principles. Need I suggest to Amer- 
ican citizens the meanino; of our color-bearer's act? 



NOTES. 



Page 9, ninth line. — The boundaries of ancient Dover do not ap- 
pear to have been accurately defined before the union with Massa- 
chusetts, and there is no record of its northern line until October 
19, 1652. The original territory has been subdivided as follows : 

Bloody Point, with part of Portsmouth, was incorporated as a 
parish July 16, 1713, under the name of Newington, and appears to 
have had township privileges from that time. 

On the 5th of May, 1705, a petition had been received by the 
Provincial authorities from inhabitants of Greenland, (a territory 
much earlier known by that name,) for incorporation as a parish. 
No record of the result appears, but on the 12th of May, 1714, an 
order was issued that the line between the parishes of Newington 
and Greenland be defined, and the result of this shows lands origi- 
nally part of Dover, to be now in Greenland. 

Oyster River was made a parish. May 4, 1716 ; and incorporated 
as a town, under the name of Durham, May 31, 1755. 

Somersworth was made a parish December 19, 1729, and incor- 
porated as a town April 22, 1754. 

Madbury was incorporated as a parish May 31, 1755, being made 
up of parts of Dover and Durham ; and as a town, May 26, 1768. 

Lee was taken from Durham, January 17, 1766, nominally as a 
parish, but with all town privileges. 

Rollimford was taken from Somersworth, July 3, 1849. 

Pages 10 and 18.— The names of the early settlers are of uncer- 
tain spelling. Thomjjson, the settler of 1623, is so spelled by Bel- 
knap, but the original document of 1622, in possession of Charles 
Deane, Esq., is decisive that it should be Thomson. In an official 
paper of 1622, he is styled " gentleman." The names appended 
to the " Combination" of 1640, page 18, were copies made in 



53 

1682-3. Of these names it should be noted: Pinckhame is now Pi7ik- 
ham. Camond is elsewhere Camock. Descendants of Walder7i 
changed the name to Waldron. Teddar was doubtless an error for 
Kidder. Ugroufe is elsewhere Upgrove. Canning was correct, but 
it is now Canney and Kenney. The researches of Charles W. 
Tuttle show conclusively that Chatnpernoon shoiild be Champer- 
nowne. Edward Starr, I doubt not, should be Edward Starbuck. 
Rawlins was correct, but is no .v usually Rollins. 

Page 16, line 14. — It should be stated that while the expedition 
of Gen. Stark originated solely in New Hampshire, and was not 
under the control of the Continental Congress, it was largely rein- 
forced by Vermont soldiers. 

Page 37, line U. — It i - uniformly stated in print that Gen. John 
Sullivan was born on the Bdrwick side of the Salmon Falls river. 
But the tradition here has uniformly been that his birth-place was" 
an exception to that of the others of his family, and to have been 
on the Dover side of the river. Whether any records settle the 
question beyond doubt, I am ignorant. It is certain that his father 
was at one time the "school-master" of Dover, by vote of the 
town ; and that he was extensively engaged in teaching on this side 
of the river in different years. 



ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSAEY 



NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE 



JULY 4, 1876; 



CELEBRATION BY THE CITY OF DOVER, N. H., 



THE PUBLIC PROCEEDINGS, 



ORATION 



By Rev. ALONZO H. QUINT, d. d. 




DOVER, N. H. : 

MORNING STAR STEAM JOB»PRINTING HOUSE. 
1876. 



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